Weekly Series: the Details

Once again we feature two nights of match play, providing essential two divisions for teams. However, we are moving match nights to better accommodate feedback from teams regarding availability.

The Swiss bracket (“Division 2”) now takes place on Wednesday nights, starting 30 minutes earlier, at 7:30pm AEST. The first Swiss night is 9 August, and then weekly on Wednesdays after that.

Playoff night (“Division 1”) has been moved to Tuesday nights, with each playoff taking place in the week after the relevant Swiss bracket. This means the first night of Playoffs is 15 August.

Here is the full Season Schedule. Read below for details of how things will work from week to week:

Note that if a team is knocked out of the Playoff bracket on Tuesday, they will be required to play in the Swiss bracket the following night.

There are two ways to qualify to play in the week’s Division 1 matches:

1. Top 4 from Swiss

Each Wednesday, teams play against each other in four rounds of Swiss bracket. At the end of the night, the top 4 teams qualify for Playoffs on the following Tuesday. These four teams are seeded 5,6,7 and 8. The new Playoff structure will feature these four teams playing against each other in the first round, so matches should be much closer for the teams that participate.

2. Top 4 from (Previous Week’s) Playoffs

The other four teams in the playoffs qualify from the previous week’s playoff round, with the exception of Round 1.In Round 1, the four teams that played in the Blizzard ANZ Season 3 Finals (Nomia, Dark Sided, TrumpSports and NMD) all automatically qualify for Playoffs (on 15 August) and do not have to play in the first round of Swiss (on 9 August).

The teams that qualify for Playoffs from one week to the next will be seeded 1, 2, 3 and 4. They will be matched against each other in their Round 1 matches, so matches in Round 1 will again be much closer.

Double Elimination Playoff Bracket

For Season 4, the Playoff bracket will be a Modified Double Elimination format. Seeds 1-4 will be placed in the Upper Bracket, and have two “lives” each. Seeds 5-8 are placed in the Lower Bracket, and have only one “life”. In other words, if a team in the Upper Bracket loses their round 1 match, they are pushed into the Lower Bracket for round 2, but if a team in the Lower Bracket loses their first round match, they’ll be knocked out of playoffs.

Any team that gets knocked out of the Lower Bracket (in both round 1 and 2) will have to re-qualify for the next Playoff by entering the Swiss bracket on Wednesday night.

The Playoff bracket each week will feature two rounds of play only, in both the Upper and Lower Brackets, with all matches bo3.

As with Season 3, the four teams that stay in Division 1 from one week to the next may not play in the next week’s Swiss bracket!

Here’s an overview of the Season:

Round 1

Division 2 Swiss

Date: Wednesday night, 9 August 2017

Swiss bracket, 4 matches, bo1

Open to all teams in ANZ

Top 4 teams qualify for Playoffs

Division 1 Playoff

Date: Tuesday night, 15 August 2017

Modified Double elimination bracket, 2 rounds, bo3

Open to only Top 4 teams from Swiss and the four Season 3 Finalists

Top 4 teams proceed to Round 2 Playoffs (i.e. Division 1)

Bottom 4 teams return to Round 2 Swiss (i.e. Division 2)

Round 2

Division 2 Swiss

Date: Wednesday night, 16 August 2017

Swiss bracket, 4 matches, bo1

Open to all teams in ANZ

Top 4 teams qualify for Playoffs

Division 1 Playoff

Date: Tuesday night, 22 August 2017

Single elimination bracket, 2 rounds, bo3

Top 4 teams from Swiss + Top 4 teams from Round 1 Playoffs

Top 4 teams proceed to Round 3 Playoffs (i.e. Division 1)

Bottom 4 teams return to Round 3 Swiss (i.e. Division 2)

Round 3 & Round 4

Rounds 3 and 4 repeat the process from Round 2.

Qualification for Blizzard ANZ Finals

The top 4 teams from the entire series will qualify to play in the Blizzard ANZ Finals on 30 September. Please note that we are still awaiting confirmation of whether all four teams will play at LAN in Sydney on 30 September, or if only the top 2 will progress to this stage.

To identify the Top 4, a Leaderboard will be maintained. Teams earn points on the leaderboard by winning matches in both the Swiss and Playoff rounds each week:

Standard Points

1 point for winning a Swiss bracket (Division 2) match

3 points for winning an Playoff (Division 1) Upper Bracket match

2 points for winning a Playoff (Division 2) Lower Bracket match

Bonus Points

2 bonus points for finishing in the top 4 of the week’s Swiss bracket

Note: these points are only awarded if the team actually plays in the Playoff round

2 bonus points for finishing in the top 4 of the Round’s Playoff bracket.

Understanding the Points System

Teams should be rewarded for their success from one week to the next. The first rewards, Standard Points, come from winning matches. This means that a team that wins all four of their matches on Swiss night will get four points towards their Qualification campaign. Finishing in the Swiss Top 4 earns a place in the Playoff Round for that week, and that earns two Bonus Points. Note that if a team only wins three matches on Swiss night, but still make the top 4, they still get the Bonus Points for making it through to the Playoff round!

In Season 4, we’ve changed the structure of Playoff points to better reward teams that win matches. We’ve also introduced a modified double elimination format. Because Upper Bracket matches are expected to be much harder to win (because your opponents are better at the game), a match win earns 3 standard points. Lower bracket matches will earn 2 standard points for wins.

We’ve also reduced the bonus points that teams earn from staying in the Playoff bracket from one week to the next. The bonus points still reward teams for staying in the playoffs, but keep the emphasis on winning playoff matches instead of just maintaining position.

A final note on the points system: we’re confident that the points system will reward winning behaviour but as this is a change from Season 3, we reserve the right to make adjustments to ensure the system doesn’t have any exploits that can be abused. If you do spot something that could be a problem, let us know. We’ll make sure it’s worth your while!

Participation Rewards

Blizzard ANZ will once again be rewarding teams that participate in all four weeks of the qualification series. There will be additional rewards for all teams that have participated in the Playoff rounds of three or more weeks. Watch out for a further announcement that will provide details of the rewards to come!

Tiebreakers

There is a possibility that teams will be tied for match wins after four rounds of Swiss on Tuesday nights. If this results in more than 4 teams being in the “top 4” we will use Challonge’s standard tiebreaker algorithms to break ties. In other words, if two teams are ranked 4th and 5th but have identical match wins, Challonge will order them based on tiebreaker algorithms (TB, Bucholz and Points Difference). In the rare case that two teams are in this situation and have identical records for all three tiebreakers, they will be required to play in a head-to-head match immediately after the completion of the 4 round of Swiss. The head-to-head tiebreaker match will be bo1 and the winner will proceed to Playoffs.